My first research love was in the area of marriage and the family life. When it came time to choose my ownspecific contribution to the field, I chose to research resilient marriages that somehow grow strong in difficult circumstances. Looking back over the last several SMC articles, I can see that I have returned to that old interest of mine. This week that theme is reintroduce, with our ongoing metaphor of Genesis 2:6 where God makes humanity out of the mud of the earth, and Divine Breath. That earthy image suggeststhe roots for a spirituality planted, and grown in the rich soil of marriage and family life. See how it squares with your experience even if you’re divorced, or never been married. After all, one way or another, everybody comes from a family.
My formal research as well as the informal, but more rigorous research of my marriage has shown me time and again that David Schnarch, hit the nail on the head with his famous quote, “Marriage is a people growing machine”…and not primarily because marriages produce babies… Within the daily experience of the coupled life, invitations are regularly issued to grow beyond the current level of emotional and spiritual development so that one can meet the challenge of loving a spouse, a child, a parent, or an in-law in a way that this new moment calls for… To give an old phrase a half-turn, “necessity is the mother of self-re-invention.” There is nothing like marriage and family life to reveal that Tom Wagner 2.0 needs to be upgraded to 2.5, and beyond. It’s in therelationships where I am “all in” that I regularly discover the limits of my development. That dawning discovery carries with it a tacit invitation. “Tom, are you ready to become more than who you are in order to meet this moment?” Returning to the metaphor of Genesis 2, it’s a lot like being invited back into the mud…available to be formed again… nostrils open for another Creative Breath blowing me forward into a more differentiated self, capable of giving and receiving more delight, more beauty, in short, more love.
These graced moments, these sacred callings feel like anything but grace. You may be familiar with Jesus’ famous quote, “The truth will set you free” (John 8:31). Here’s the part that Jesus should have said out loud. “But first, it will piss you off and scare you.” These invitations to step into the muddy process of growth are typically unsettling, and they occur in the most banal of circumstances. I remember The “Small Children” phase of our life, when like an alcoholic seeking sobriety, I had to learn to ask my Higher Power day-by-day and sometimes minute-by-minute for “just enough” energy, “just enough” patience, “just enough” love to meet this moment. I needed a source for these things beyond myself. The same methodology was necessary in the “Adolescent” phase of the family where I needed to breath in “just enough” peace to soothe my heart down and not allow my inner adolescent to fight with the outer-adolescent that stood before me like a little lawyer in business for herself. This same spiritual technique has served me well in marital conflicts, when taking a Sacred breath is the difference between reactivity and responsiveness.
Besides taking away the fun part, the vow of celibacy implicit in monastic, convent, and rectory life also takes away diapers, school schedules, adolescent boundary testing, young adult launching, and spouses that don’t see things my way. Besides taking away the fun stuff, the vow of poverty takes away the nail biting of household balance sheets and all that goes with them. What’s left is time and space for pursuing the inner life, including long stretches of time available for spiritual reading, spiritual writing, and contemplative practices like meditation. Until fairly recently, the vowed life was seen as superior to the booming, banging, buzzing, muddy spirituality of family life. Until fairly recently, if you wanted to read about the contemplative life, your author would have occupied a room in a monastery, or a convent.
Here’s a statement you would never have read in one of these books, and I’ll stake my reputation on the fact that it’s entirely true. “You’ll know you really love your adolescent when you hate them.” Unless you have raised one, you might be shocked by this aphorism. The willingness to roll up your sleeves, and step into the mud of their development, setting boundaries, allowing them to push back on you, staying empathetic, worrying about them, making mistakes with them, and apologizing when you do… these are the telltale signs of loving them…and them loving you. I could just as easily have replaced the word “adolescent,” with “aging parent with dementia,” or at times, a demanding or tantruming “three-nager,” or even, “a spouse.” Getting all in with anybody will introduce you to creative messiness. It’s muddy work this marriage and family spirituality.
I am convinced that the reason we have so few married saints in the Christian tradition is because people don’t know what they are looking at when they see “The Holy” in the context of marriages and the family. The author of the Book of Revelation introduces a metaphorical image set in heaven. It describesthose whose robes “are washed white in the blood of the lamb” (Revelations 7: 13). I’m confident that right next door to that gathering in the story, there is another gathering of those whose robes were left stained and muddy as a testament to the peculiar type of holiness that is found in marriage and family life. These are the ones who time-and-again responded to the call to get back into the mud for another round of formation… for a deeper and deeper Creative breath blown into their nostrils.
There is so much more to say about this that I will pick up next week. For now, I would like to leave you with some questions to discuss with yourself or someone else.
Questions for Reflection
Who is it these days that you love enough to get muddy with…?
What is your method for taking in “just enough” peace, patience, love to transform your reactivity to responsiveness?
Eugene Peterson, the recently deceased mystic, Biblical scholar, husband, father, and grandfather has plenty to say about the theme that I will call, “The Muddy Way.” You can get a substantial taste of this approach to spiritual theology in his conversation with U-2’s Bono below.